AN ATTEMPT was made during the1976 legislative session to find a solution for one of the recurrent problems faced by legislators. Members of the General Assembly over the years have had little idea of how much money they were appropriating as they considered and voted on bills throughout the session. They also had no idea of how the appropriations they were voting on compared with estimates of available revenue. A " legislative appropriations monitoring system, " developed earlier this year, attempted to keep the legislators informed on almost a daily basis.
The basic problems involved in trying to keep track of appropriations arise from the large numbers of bills which are introduced to provide funds for the multitude of state agencies and services. The attempt, early in the 1976 session, to introduce omnibus bills was aimed at partially answering that problem at the expense of knowing in detail what was being spent in each individual agency.
Accuracy and timeliness
Past attempts at monitoring appropriations bills have suffered from lack of accuracy and/or timeliness. The mostaccurate information generally had been hand-calculated but was not available when it would be of greatest value. The most timely data, although less accurate, had been provided through computerization.
The system developed during this past session was computerized and did suffer from delays. The normal gap was two days although some delays were a full week. The system was developed by the Joint Committee on Legislative Information with the help of the partisan staffs of the legislative leadership. In order to generate the updated appropriations status documents, information was provided to the Legislative Information System (LIS) by the Republican and Democratic staffs. As appropriations bills moved through the various stages of the legislative process, "updateforms" were completed by staff members responsible for the particular budget and returned to LIS.
Data were "confirmed" by comparing the information received from the respective staffs, and discrepancies were handled through contact with the individuals who were responsible for completing the forms. This was an accurate procedure although not quite as timely as desired. It was sped up some what in order to handle conference committee reports in the closing days of the session when timeliness became of greater import.
The monitoring system generated several types of information: 1) totals of appropriations for the current and approaching fiscal years; 2) aggregate totals of current appropriations according to where appropriation bills were located in the process of bill enactment, by fund, by bill, by agency and item of expenditure. There were approximately 15 different formats developed for providing display of the data.
Printed copies of the full appropriations reports were run daily. The information was also available on CRTs (a television-type screen terminal) located in various legislative offices. The staffs summarized the information for members of the General Assembly. The House Democratic staff provided for majority members a weekly graph which showed cumulative amounts of appropriations compared with estimates of available resources.
The House Republican staff was able to complete preparation of final reports within several hours of the completion of the legislative session. This was an accomplishment which in the past has taken at least several days to compile.
There still are a number of bugs to be worked out of the system. One of these is coordination between the appropriations monitoring system and the computerized bill status -system which LIS has been operating for several years. During this past session special reports had to be developed and hand-checked in order to coordinate the two systems. LIS is now working to develop a means of integrating appropriations data into the on-line bill status system.
Even with the problems that were evident, this new attempt at providing accurate and timely information on appropriations action to members of the General Assembly was superior to what had been previous experience. It was an attempt to face the criticism often leveled at legislators about their lack of knowledge concerning their tendency to over appropriate funds in relation to available resources because they had no idea of the running totals of the mass of appropriations bills that they faced in the hectic closing weeks of the session.
Griesheimer resolution
But this effort on the part of the partisan staffs and the Legislative Information System is not the only one being made to address the problem. Rep. Ronald Griesheimer (R., Waukegan) introduced a resolution (H.J.R.-81), cosponsored by 17 other members, which would require that the daily calendars utilized by both the Senate and House contain information concerning the status of appropriations bills as of the close of legislative business on the preceding day of the session.
The data called for in the resolution includes: 1) cumulative amount of appropriations provided for by bills which have passed the Senate only, the House only and both houses; and 2) an estimate of the funds expected to be available for expenditure in the fiscal year as provided by the Economic and Fiscal Commission or modified by joint resolution. The intent clearly is to insure that members have a daily update of their cumulative action.
While the resolution did not come to a vote in the House Rules Committee, where it was being considered during the past session, it is another indication of an interest by members of the General Assembly in having better intimation to guide them in their actions. It is likely that this question will be raised again in the 80th General Assembly. / L.S.C & K.E.M.ž
October 1976 / Illinois Issues / 27